Can't send keys using multithreading with selenium

Question

I'm trying to use a multi-thread strategy with selenium. In shorts I'm trying to fill in input field with ids.

This is my script :

from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
import numpy as np
import sys
from selenium import webdriver

def driver_setup():
    path = "geckodriver.exe"
    options = webdriver.FirefoxOptions()
    options.add_argument('--incognito')
    # options.add_argument('--headless')
    driver = webdriver.Firefox(options=options, executable_path=path)
    return driver


def fetcher(id, driver):
    print(id) #this works
    
    # this doesnt work
    driver.get(
        "https://www.roboform.com/filling-test-all-fields")
    driver.find_element(By.XPATH, '//input[@name="30_user_id"]').send_keys(id)
    time.sleep(2)
    print(i, " sent")
    #return data

def crawler(ids):
    for id in ids:
        print(i)
        results = fetcher(id, driver_setup())

drivers = [driver_setup() for _ in range(4)]


ids = list(range(0,50)) # generates ids
print(ids)
chunks = np.array_split(np.array(ids),4) #splits the id list into 4 chunks

with ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=4) as executor:
    bucket = executor.map(crawler, chunks)
    #results = [item for block in bucket for item in block]

[driver.quit() for driver in drivers]

Everything seems to work except the send_keys method. Both print() works so it seems the ids are sent to both functions. Weirdly, I don't get an error message (i get the pycharm's Process finished with exit code 0 notice) so I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

Any idea what is missing ?

I used this example : https://blog.devgenius.io/multi-threaded-web-scraping-with-selenium-dbcfb0635e83 if it helps

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 15 '23 at 21:45

Possibly you trying to invoke send_keys() too early even before the <input> field have rendered completely.

Solution

Ideally to send a character sequence to the element you need to induce WebDriverWait for the element_to_be_clickable() and you can use either of the following locator strategies:

Using NAME:

WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.NAME, "30_user_id"))).send_keys(id)

Using CSS_SELECTOR:

WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "input[name='30_user_id']"))).send_keys(id)

Using XPATH:

WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, "//input[@name='30_user_id']"))).send_keys(id)

Note: You have to add the following imports :

from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 16 '23 at 02:28

when using threading, watch out for exceptions as they get embedded into futures. for example change your code to have the below-tweaked code(don't change any other line yet)

with ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=4) as executor:
    bucket = executor.map(crawler, chunks)
    # bucket is list of futures, so let's try to print it
    for e_buck in bucket: # simpleapp add for demo
        print(e_buck) #

you will see that you will get exception errors like:

i is not defined, look at this statement print(i, " sent") and print(i) in crawler.
once you fix the above error, the next error will be in the id in send keys- send_keys(id), id is of type numpy.int64. change it to str by typecast, str(), send_keys(str(id))

so your code, after fixes will be like:

from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
import numpy as np
import sys
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.common.action_chains import ActionChains as AC
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
import time

def driver_setup():
    path = "geckodriver.exe"
    options = webdriver.FirefoxOptions()
    options.add_argument('--incognito')
    # options.add_argument('--headless')
    driver = webdriver.Firefox(options=options, executable_path=path)
    return driver


def fetcher(id, driver):
    print(id) #this works
    
    # this doesnt work - it will work now :)
    driver.get(
        "https://www.roboform.com/filling-test-all-fields")
    driver.find_element(By.XPATH, '//input[@name="30_user_id"]').send_keys(str(id))
    time.sleep(2)
    print(id, " sent")
    #return data

def crawler(ids):
    for id in ids:
        print(id)
        results = fetcher(id, driver_setup())

#drivers = [driver_setup() for _ in range(4)]


ids = list(range(0,50)) # generates ids
print(ids)
chunks = np.array_split(np.array(ids),4) #splits the id list into 4 chunks

with ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=4) as executor:
    bucket = executor.map(crawler, chunks)
    # bucket is list of futures, so let's try to print it
    for e_buck in bucket: # simpleapp add for demo
        print(e_buck) # check what print, you get, first time you will get that
        # i is not defined, look at this statment print(i, " sent") and print(i) in crawler. 
        # once you fix the above error, next error will be in id in send keys- send_keys(id), id is of type ''numpy.int64''. change it to str by typecast, str(), send_keys(str(id))
    #results = [item for block in bucket for item in block]

#[driver.quit() for driver in drivers]

Can't send keys using multithreading with selenium

2 Answers2

Solution